Workstation GPUs: PC gaming’s new enemy

All three PC GPU makers now look like leaning tougher into AI-specific graphics playing cards, straining a good PC graphics market even additional.

Just a few years in the past, PC gaming was seen as an enormous progress driver for the silicon business, fanatics, and PC makers alike. Now, the meteoric rise of AI is luring {hardware} makers away from customers, and we’re seeing much more penalties because of this.

This week, AMD launched the Radeon AI Professional R9700 graphics card for AI workstations, alongside the Radeon AI Professional R9700S and Professional R9600D for rack computing. Intel is reportedly launching the Arc Professional B70 and Arc Professional B65 this month, almost definitely particularly for working LLMs. And Nvidia is projected to probably skip 2026 solely for a launch of shopper GPUs, concentrating on promoting whole methods like Vera Rubin slightly than a shopper Rubin-based PC graphics card.

All of that GPU silicon may have landed on shopper PCs — and possibly would have, a number of years in the past. Now, we noticed GPU shipments fall late final yr due to AI hyperscalers. Now workstations have joined the group, beating up on the PC.

The comparatively small variety of workstations bought probably signifies that shifting the graphics silicon to workstations and datacenters may not have an infinite impression on PC GPU gross sales. However the traumatized PC market is weathering shortages of RAM and SSDs, alongside attainable scarcity of Intel CPUs and a graphics market that has undergone shortages earlier than. Just like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s again, it simply strains the system additional — and if not in shortages of GPU silicon, than the accompanying video RAM.

In a report issued Tuesday. GPU analyst Jon Peddie Analysis discovered that PC GPU shipments dropped 1.3 % from final quarter, uncommon when the fourth quarter is often the excessive level of the yr. GPUs bought into information facilities, nevertheless, climbed 17 %.

JPR additionally discovered that the GPU connect price for PCs fell to 116 %, down 3.9 % sequentially. (The connect price refers back to the variety of GPUs bought per PC. On this case, a PC may have two GPUs — an built-in chip in addition to a discrete graphics card, growing the general proportion.)

Sadly, pivoting away from the PC is sensible

Anybody who isn’t Nvidia has some powerful decisions to make.

Intel made a robust displaying in its Core Extremely Sequence 3 (Panther Lake) pocket book GPUs, however the market has frequently puzzled when Intel would convey its “Massive Battlemage” structure to market as a desktop graphics card. Whereas it surfaced final yr, the most recent report from Videocardz now positions the Intel B70 within the context of an LLM packaged stack for working and benchmarking LLM efficiency on its multi-GPU Arc platform. (The reference has since been faraway from the Intel web page.)

The implication is that Intel could also be stealing a web page from AMD’s Radeon AI Professional R9700 card and directing its B70 structure into the AI market, slightly than pushing pixels on the PC.

Pivoting between a desktop gaming GPU and one particularly designed for the workstation isn’t that troublesome, comparatively. They’ll each use the identical primary silicon platform, however differ in each the connected reminiscence in addition to the motive force software program. Workstations use what are referred to as licensed drivers written particularly by an Autodesk or a Siemens for a selected card, whereas Home windows will use Microsoft’s DirectX API, defined JPA principal Jon Peddie in an interview.

“What I believe is occurring is that these guys are attempting to tiptoe into the market, however possibly don’t have fairly the [AI] functionality that Nvidia has on their machines and that AMD has of their Intuition [data center] stuff,” Peddie mentioned. “And they also’re saying that is form of like just a little brother AI GPU. That’s the best way I see it taking part in out.”

@realVictor_M (X.com)

And why wouldn’t they? Workstation-class playing cards usually promote for about 3 times of a desktop graphics card; present costs of an Nvidia RTX 5090 run (gulp) $3,699 on Newegg, however new RTX Professional 6000 playing cards with 96GB of GDDR7 reminiscence are promoting for about $9,000 on eBay. If AMD or Intel have been in a position to swap out PC graphics playing cards for these sorts of costs in workstations, you possibly can argue that they’d be silly to not. (A workstation card can be utilized by a typical desktop PC, however usually isn’t — its drivers aren’t optimized for gaming.)

It’s not likely in regards to the numbers. The variety of workstations bought yearly is tiny — 7 million or so — versus the 280 million PCs that have been bought in 2025. Datacenter GPUs choose high-bandwidth reminiscence, or HBM, but it surely’s the reminiscence that’s the concern. Graphics playing cards for each the PC and workstation usually use some taste of GDDR reminiscence. (Workstations may additionally add error-correcting or ECC logic to forestall crashes of crucial functions.) However workstations additionally snap up extra of that reminiscence, too: between 32 and 48GB of reminiscence versus the 12 to 24GB of reminiscence {that a} shopper card makes use of.

All this implies is that any shift away from the PC will probably pressure the availability of PC graphics-card reminiscence additional. And the conclusion will not be one you’ll wish to hear.

“The indicators we’re getting from the suppliers and the geopolitical issues which are occurring is that we see that there’s simply going to be no availability, interval,” Peddie mentioned. “The supply goes to be very restricted, and in order that, in flip, is simply going to push individuals to cease buying. So should you have been going to go refresh your PC or your graphics board, even in 2026, now you’re going to go, ‘possibly not.’

“The worth simply went up by 50 % — I don’t want it that badly, proper?” Peddie added. “It’s a pleasant to have, but it surely’s not a should have. I’ll simply wait this out till the costs come again down — which goes to devastate PC and graphics board gross sales for the patron.”